What is it for?
Defining the data challenge for family, domestic and sexual violence is a tool for policy and data experts, as well as researchers and service providers with an interest in data, in the fields of family, domestic and sexual violence in Australia.

It defines and describes the social phenomena of family, domestic and sexual violence and aims to put it into a statistically measurable context.

It does this by identifying key statistically measurable ‘elements’ (see Figure 1). These elements describe the types of data needed to:

• support the analysis of the current status of family, domestic and sexual violence as areas of social concern;
• support measurement of the activity and performance of the systems that provide responses to family, domestic and sexual violence; and
• support the measurement of changes over time, across geographies and between communities.

Figure 1: The Six Statistical Elements


The document outlines the data collection challenges (including under-reporting, and barriers to disclosure), assisting in uncovering current and potential data sources in relation to family, domestic and sexual violence. It forms the building blocks for a common language to help measure family, domestic and sexual violence in Australia across sectors and jurisdictions.

Bringing all this together in one document creates an agreed starting point to analyse how existing data may be brought together to be more comparable or usable, and to identify and agree key data gaps and potentially how to fill them. Where there are differences between jurisdictions or sectors, it will be possible to come back to this document to help understand the differences and identify what impact they may have.

This document will also help educate others such as researchers and service providers about potential sources or limitations who may be collecting or using data about family, domestic and sexual violence.


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